TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2012//
TI  - Shoot or don't shoot? Why police officers are more inclined to shoot when they are anxious
JO  - Emotion
A1  - Nieuwenhuys, Arne
A1  - Savelsbergh, Geert J. P.
A1  - Oudejans, Raoul R. D.
SP  - 827
EP  - 833
VL  - 12
IS  - 4
N2  - We investigated the effect of anxiety on police officers' shooting decisions. Thirty-six police officers participated and executed a low- and high-anxiety video-based test that required them to shoot or not shoot at rapidly appearing suspects that either had a gun and "shot," or had no gun and "surrendered." Anxiety was manipulated by turning on (high anxiety) or turning off (low anxiety) a so-called "shootback canon" that could fire small plastic bullets at the participants. When performing under anxiety, police officers showed a response bias toward shooting, implying that they accidentally shot more often at suspects that surrendered. Furthermore, shot accuracy was lower under anxiety and officers responded faster when suspects had a gun. Finally, because gaze behavior appeared to be unaffected by anxiety, it is concluded that when they were anxious, officers were more inclined to respond on the basis of threat-related inferences and expectations rather than objective, task-relevant visual information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1528-3542
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0025699
ID  - ref1
ER  -